Falling
by GreenSpine
Summary: The only time Sirius stops running is when he falls. Sirius centric, Sirius x Remus.


**Disclaimer:** These characters belong to other people and companies. Not me.

**Warnings:** Angst, Slash

**Summary:** The only time Sirius stops running is when he falls.

**Notes:** Many thanks to Lady Black for her help!

**Falling**

You grew up in pain because they hated you. You were not good enough, never good enough, because you couldn't sit still when they wanted you to and always had questions about things you were supposed to simply hate. You were smart, though, smarter than they were, and you realized at some point that they were wrong about you. And you wanted to like yourself, you really did, so you spent all of your time trying to, without ever actually knowing how to go about it.

And then they send you to school and the Hat puts you into Gryffindor. They have even more reason to hate you now, new names to call you. But you have learned how to run away from them. You have found the way out with your friends and your adventures and tricks and you never let your mind rest for even a second because then it won't catch up with you.

You don't want your new friends to know what you're doing. You want them to see you as the confident person you are trying so hard to become. So when the nasty letters arrive every single week, you shrug and blow it off with a grin. Your friends don't ask any awkward questions.

And so what if Snape knows too much about you and your family, if he tries to raise his status amongst his peers by making a joke out of you. If you're quick and you're clever, if you hate him more loudly and nastily than he hates you, he won't be able to get to you first.

Later on, you find out that one of your friends has a secret, that he's hiding something that people think is ugly and evil and wrong. And you know for sure that it's absolute rubbish because if Remus is evil, then so are you and you refuse to accept that. And Remus is not like you; he has never run from anything a day in his life. He isn't what you sometimes can't help but believe that you are and that you are trying so hard to convince yourself you aren't. He is good and calm and patient and so many things you wish you could be.

Your best friend James has begun to suspect, has pried some of your secrets out of you at weak moments, when you're in doubt and think maybe that you're not strong enough to not hate yourself. And he loves you anyway, although of course sometimes you think maybe it is just because he is too naive to know what ugliness there is in the world when he sees it.

Peter is always just there, and sometimes you love him for that because you see good things about yourself reflected in him, and sometimes you can't help but despise him, just a little, because he never has trouble falling asleep, never has to memorize exhaustive lists of Potions ingredients just to stay one step ahead of himself.

And you keep growing up and one day you come to understand something important, and it gives you a whole new list of names you can pretend you aren't calling yourself in the middle of the night: fag, fairy, poofter, shirt-lifter, cock-sucker. And you know these things are what your family would say if they knew, but you don't care, you really don't, because you know in your head that what they think is _wrong_ and so you just keep running...

You've grown closer to your friends, and there are days you feel complete and accepted and warm inside and it's almost tempting to slow down a little, to open up and drink the days in and let them fill you. But there are new projects, and you learn how to run on four legs beneath a full moon. And for once, it isn't for yourself, or to get away from anything, but is a gift back to your friends and you feel free.

They sense it at home that you're going where they can't touch you anymore. They know they have lost the ability to shame and hurt you and that makes them try even harder. One summer night you give them one last chance to love you. You tell them that this is just who you are and that they're going to have to accept it.

They tell you to leave.

You go to James, your brother, and his family takes you in. You tell them the whole thing was your idea, that you'd decided to run away – because you're not about to admit to that last bit of wanting you've held through all the years. You grin while you say it, and everyone believes you.

But for a long time, you have to go farther, faster, be more outrageous than you've ever been, because you don't want to remember that it was the other way around. You can't help being who you are and you wouldn't change it if you could, but when you think you wonder why it has to be this way and it hurts.

You're spending a lot of time with James and it shouldn't surprise you but it does when one day, shortly after you return to school, James confronts you about your sexuality. And you can see everything slipping away. So you admit to it, your back straight and your head held high, disdain carefully showing on your face, because you know from experience that being hated hurts less when you manage to keep your pride.

James only shrugs and does not say a single word, which unnerves you more than anything, and so you run from James only to somehow end up in a shouting match with Snape. Snape knows (almost) everything about you, Regulus has told him, but somehow he also knows a disturbing amount about Remus. And you've lost your best friend already anyway and the world is one giant fuck-up and you're so _angry_ that you're ready to knock down the entire house of cards. You're cold, burnt-out from spending yourself to not be what they called you, so for the first time in your life, you give up.

You send Snape to meet the werewolf. You send that slimy bastard to meet your _friend_ in full knowing and you are glad because then Remus will have a reason to hate you too (besides, he would never have wanted you the way you want him anyway) and the destruction of your life will be truly complete.

Only, it doesn't happen that way.

Prongs saves Snape, wins the admiration and respect he's always sought, and he even wins Lily's heart.

Wormtail saves them all, and the knowledge that he's done so straightens his spine and opens his eyes.

Moony wakes up the next morning, torn and aching, and listens calmly to your story. When you finish, all he asks is, "Why?"

You tell him. He's going to hate you anyway, and he has the right. You tell him you were kicked out of your family's house and not the other way around. You tell him you don't know anything at all about being a good person, that you're a fake, something no one in their right minds would want to have around. You tell him you're a pervert, too, for good measure.

Instead of anger or rejection, he takes your hand. Lying in a hospital bed covered in wounds you might as well have given him yourself, he _touches_ you.

"I understand," Remus says. And for the first time since you were a very young child, you cry. Because Remus really does understand, he has his own inner demons, and if you'd only thought about talking to him sooner, you wouldn't have hurt him.

Things change after this. It is noticed that the pranks around the school are growing fewer and farther in between. There are whispers that the Marauders are growing farther apart, but really, you've never been closer. You show each other your real faces now, and when you run because you simply can't help yourself, James or Peter or Remus catches you.

One warm spring night, when Hogwarts is almost over and you're filled with anxiety you start to slip, start to go off a little too sharply, so you walk around the lake, over and over, until Remus finds you and pulls you behind a bush and kisses you.

He promises to stay with you.

You leave school and move into a flat with Remus and live happily for a few months. You join the Order of the Phoenix, proud to be doing something that is so obviously good. Sometimes, more rarely now than before, you can still hear the old words from childhood, now faded to a whisper, almost as a mantra in your head: _blood traitor not good enough wrong wrong wrong_. Only, it is easy to ignore it because you are warm and you are loved and you know that they were never right in the first place.

More quickly than you would have believed possible, the war goes from frightening to ugly. Good people are suffering and dying. You see things that leave you shaking for hours afterward. Everything you've come to know as normal has been turned upside-down. You wake up each morning grateful to still have all of your fingers, your limbs, and that your mind is still free and your own. You're still running, but like the Red Queen, you have to run twice as fast to stay in the same place, to stay whole.

Lily and James marry and have a baby. Harry is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, and it means the world that James trusts you so much, knowing what you've done and are capable of, that he and Lily ask you to be Harry's godfather, to love him and raise him and look after him if anything happens.

When you find out that one of you is a spy, it breaks your heart, and into the cracks and pieces everything pushed behind and ignored bleeds in, poisoning you. It's down to Remus or Peter, and Remus has faults, and you're not sure what you're thinking, but you know that maybe you aren't as good for him as he is for you. Maybe you've been feeding _his_ demons when you selfishly ask him to tie you up so that you can't break free. Maybe he's been playing with you all along and you've been too weak to see it. And you've slipped and fallen again because one thought never leaves you, no matter how many missions you accept, or how hard you fight to rid yourself of it: you think that maybe nothing truly good could ever have wanted you, anyway.

So you rush ahead and make another stupid mistake and this time it kills almost everyone you love. When you are told you are being sent to Azkaban you laugh and laugh because at least it means you won't be able to hurt Remus or Harry any more than you have already.

Azkaban is meant to destroy you slowly, only you can't help but fight it, fighting is all you've ever known how to do, and really what's the problem with losing the ability to feel happiness when it's never been something you could rely on anyway? And here you don't have to pretend for anyone else that you're anything but an unwanted dog, the complete and total fuck-up they always said you were. These thoughts can't destroy your sanity because they've always been there, ever since you can remember.

You know they're not true; you know you are innocent.

That Peter was the one who'd betrayed you all, that hurts terribly, because Peter had been so small and so shy, so easily influenced, that it must have been your own fault somehow that he'd gone wrong. Of course it wasn't and you know that, you really do, and occasionally you allow yourself to admit that at least some of your hatred for Peter really is hatred for yourself.

Because you've tried and tried to get free and run away from the things they wanted you to feel, but even though they're all dead now you still hear their voices whispering and asking what's wrong with you and why can't you do anything right and saying we have failed with you. It is a game the Dementors love to play, all day and all night, and sometimes you wonder whether the Dementors are worse than your family or better because your family was supposed to love you, but you never quite figure out what the answer is.

You've never even thought of leaving. There isn't anything left in the world for you until you see a picture and it strikes you all of a sudden like the idiot that you are that you _left_ the baby, your own godson, in danger. That all this time, Peter has been out there, and you hear rumors, even in this hellhole, and dark things are rising and Harry isn't safe and you have no business hiding in here when you are the only one who knows the truth.

You feel sunlight on your face for the first time in twelve years - the newspaper told you it had been twelve years - and it feels good only you've forgotten what the word is to describe the lightness in your heart.

And you allow yourself one brief glimpse of Harry's face and you see James and Lily and the boy is _good_, you can tell just by looking at him, and you remember that the word for the feeling is happiness. But you've got to kill the rat. Nothing else matters; you are worth nothing as long as the rat is still out there.

You finally track it down, finally pull it into the Shrieking Shack and it's almost over but then Harry stops you and of all people, Remus is suddenly there and he _forgives you again_. He is going to help you destroy the rat. 'Together', he says, and he's going to kill Peter too, just like that, until Harry stops you both because Harry's forgiven you, too. And then Harry gives you the same gift that James and later Remus gave you so many years ago; he agrees to live with you, to be your family, and there isn't room for anything but pure joy.

The rat escapes, and your hopes won't come to pass, not yet, but now you have something bright to live for. It helps you to keep fighting, to think that someday you will be worth something, after all.

You travel because you're hunted. It's empty because you miss Harry and Remus, but it is wonderful because there is sun and water and sky and Buckbeak, and your feelings are your own, won't be taken and twisted, and as long as you don't slow down, you will remember…

Until you are called back. You go, and you aren't much but you are at least some help, and when it's all over Dumbledore tells you to stay with Remus.

And things are awkward at first, because it's so hard for you to not apologize again and again but you know Remus does not want to hear that and so you keep it to yourself. Remus has changed; the marks of his own struggles have colored his hair and deepened his eyes although his face still looks so young, and he no longer appears to take as much pleasure in human company has he used to.

He doesn't love you anymore and it makes you sad even though you could never have expected him to because you remember what his love felt like, how it was the most wonderful thing on earth. But it is your own fault for being so screwed up and you know you are very lucky he will share his home with you.

But there's nowhere to go, really, and you're kind of stuck and it makes you restless. So you push, and you're very good at it, and Remus puts up with it all and you have no idea why. And it surprises you completely when one night _he_ is the one to break down because Remus never breaks down and it is a frightening thing to see.

He makes you understand that he is sorry which is difficult to comprehend at first because it means that he thinks you didn't deserve Azkaban even though you'd believed such horrible things of him and even though James and Lily died.

And he still loves you.

Not even moving back into your parents' house can ruin that for you. It tries and on some days, when Remus is far away being useful and it grates that you can't be by his side, or by Harry's side, it comes fairly close. Their voices are louder, here, maybe even louder than in Azkaban and it's easy to mistake your mother's portrait for a Dementor when you're in the place all by yourself except for Buckbeak. Snape doesn't help, either, and you can't fight him the way you'd like because Remus needs him.

Then you're called away again and this time you're going to help Harry.

And for the third time in your life, you fall. You know that you're going to pass through the veil, and it feels like you're young and flying your broomstick again, like you're still running and running and trying to get away from everything...

But there's nowhere left to run.


End file.
